Coca-Cola received the Governor's Appreciation Certificate at a ceremony in Lahore. This certificate, the highest form of appreciation from the Governor's office, was awarded in recognition of Coca-Cola's vision and its innovative approach to adopting principles of sustainability throughout its operations. The recognition is for the company's initiatives on environmental and social sustainability as part of its portfolio for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), in particular, to honor the company being the first to receive rPET approval, Pakistan's first plastic road initiative that Punjab is adopting and being part of awareness building on plastic circularity. On this occasion, Director Public Affairs and Stakeholder Management, Dr. Faisal Hashmi received the award on behalf of the company. 'This recognition of our role as a thought leader reinforces our commitment to work cross-sectionally and streamline collections, as most of our bottling partner plants are located in Punjab province,' said Faisal Hashmi. Coca-Cola's bottling partner, Coca-Cola Içecek a Turkish investor with operations nationwide employing about a million people along the chain. Coca-Cola has pledged that it to work towards recycling about 6000 MT of plastic in 2024 and is working with the government and packaging alliance, CoRE, to formulate a regulatory path for Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (rPET). This year, Coca-Cola along with its partners, Capital Development Authority (CDA) and National Incubation Center (NIC), will mark the three-year anniversary of the first-ever plastic road of Pakistan. This 1 KM road, thrice as durable, was built in Islamabad under a public-private partnership, using 10,000 tonnes of recyclable plastic and demonstrates scalable ways to reuse un-recyclable plastic. Source: Pro Pakistani